


Knight Nav, Harrow Hope

by LapisLaysLazyontheLounge



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Diary style baby!!, F/F, I just like writing fic from a bottle's eye view its fun and challenging for me, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29584659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LapisLaysLazyontheLounge/pseuds/LapisLaysLazyontheLounge
Summary: Okay so basically- Diary fic. From Harrow's perspective. Vaguely modern au. Its about the emotions and the journey not the Plot.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

You are five and she is six. You have been pushed to the ground again, for what crime this time you’re unsure but it happened nonetheless. Little feet kick at you and you try your best not to cry, to give satisfaction. Suddenly the kicking stops and you blink up at the sky to find out why. A girl is standing over you, taller you blearily think then the boys and girls harassing you. She has one by his shirt collar, cajoling him in no uncertain terms to never do that to someone cause how “mean” it is. When he is allowed to flee he is crying and you draw some satisfaction from that regardless of how your body hurts. A pudgy hand reaches down to you and you watch the girl smile at you as she offers to help you up. 

“ M’names Gideon!” 

You are 8 and she is 9. Your grades keep you in the same year. In truth you reason you could be ahead of her, ahead of all of them but the teachers do not grant your requests. It irks you and you take it out on her often, waspish and angry. She takes it in stride most days, giving it back to you just as often; some days you ignore the glass look that crosses her face when you dig too deep and hurt too much. Those are days when she doesn’t walk next to you, half slouching her way to class; only barely passing. It horrifies you how nonchalant she can be. How easy it is for her to make friends. You have tried to be rid of her and yet she follows. Her friends become yours in a way you want to hate but cannot, her smile becomes yours in a way you want to resent but instead simply accept. 

You are 12 and she is 13. You have belatedly, in a way that makes your heart feel treacly and disgusting, realized she is your best friend. She is always there, at school, in classes, in the library after hours as you try to study alone, only semi-quietly sitting with you as she chatters on and off about sports and movies and- girls. When she brings up girls your guts twist up in a way you can’t ignore. Your grip on the pencil becomes more bone-knuckle tight, your perpetual grimace deeper. She stops bringing them up when you snap one in half as she mentions Coronabeth.

You are 15 and she is 16. You are terrified in a way you have not been since you were 8 years old. You do not look old enough, the thought races through you again, not old enough by a mile. Your hands are clammy, your heart is racing and your mouth is parched. You linger on the doorstep like a gargoyle until you hear a sound so familiar the tension in your heart eases without you wanting it to. The motorized scooter halts, the jangle of chain laden pants half slouches toward you and you feel her hesitate before touching you. She settles for clapping her hand on your shoulder, light enough for her not to bruise, hard enough for you to make you scowl. You think yourself half mad for wishing she had taken your hand. 

“You didn’t think I was gonna let my best friend get magic titty pills alone did you?” You hate her for the grin that puts on your face.

You are 17 and she is 18 and you are crying. You have not cried in so long your body barely remembers how. If you could listen to yourself it would sound like the strangled caw of a dying bird. If you could see yourself, the curled up state of you on your bed, the harsh bite of your lower lips as blood leaks from the pressure; the way tears half-heartedly cut tracks down your face as your tear ducts fitfully come to life you would say you looked the part of the high school monster they all call you when she is not in earshot. Gideon, being Gideon opts for something more intimate. “Geez Harrow you look like shit.” You uncurl and glare at her faster than a striking cobra. She shouldn’t be here. She can't be here. How is she here. Thank god she is here. You ignore that last thought, shove it down again; harder this time than before. Your scowl grows and you feel that coating, that armor come back around you. You fairly seethe as you ask her how she came to be in your home, your fingernails pierce your hand as she drawls on about never being invited over but not minding, about deciding to check up on her “Corpusulant Queen'' when she does not come to school for two days because said Queen has not missed a day of school since first grade. She talks and she talks until finally you snap. 

The slap is not hard. It can’t be with you delivering it, Gideon constantly bemoans your lack of interest in working out with her. It's the emotional toll that hurts. You’ve never seen Gideon so wounded. Now she looks like she wants to cry and you steel yourself against the howling creature in your chest that tells you to apologize to plead for forgiveness and more instead all you can do is scream at her. You yell and shove, you’re barely aware of what you’re even saying but the message is clear. When you’re done, she turns and leaves and you try to ignore the choked back sobs you hear as she runs down the stairs and your crying starts anew as you hear the scooter’s engine run away from you and you fling yourself back onto bed to scream. 

You are 19 and she is 20. You haven’t seen her in two years. It is a gaping wound in you that you refuse to tend, a void that sucks you down harder than any black hole you’ve yet studied. You catch yourself everyday thinking about red hair, thinking about easy smiles that only stretch one side of a person’s face; the comfort and closeness of her. You ignore these thoughts and lose yourself in your work. You have always been perceived as a gaunt spectre haunting hallways but now? Now you are an emaciated wraith travelling from class to library to dorm, a barely perceived block of black against the firmament. You do not care. You do not care that her name slips by you occasionally as an upcoming softball superstar. You do not care about the rumors you hear about her and a woman named Dulcinea and you do not care about the three weeks you spend crying yourself to sleep at night when you happen to catch a glimpse of a picture of them together. You do not care. 

You are 20 and she is 21. It has been three years since you talked. Your mouth is dry and your thumb shakes as you hover over her name. It is the only contact unrelated to work or college in your phone. It is your 157th time this year doing this to yourself tormenting your soul with the ease with which you can reach for her and have her reject you. You sigh, too strung out to cry and in your moment of lasp you press call instead of home. You panic as it rings once and- you can hear her breathing. Why is it so loud, so present; everything suddenly at maximum for you like the universe has compressed every soundwave to hone in on your heart. “Harrow?” the voice says and all you can do is sob. 

You are 21 and she is 22. It has taken a long time to come back to yourself. It took a fraction of the time for the two of you to heal. She dropped everything, her team meeting, her game that day, the supposed relationship with Dulcinea that was nothing in truth; all of it- just to run to you. She ran you still think sometimes in a most un-Harrow way a bit of gleeful mania rattling you. Ran 8 miles flat out to get to you. She had thought you were dying. In a way you were. It had all fallen into place then, the twist in your guts when she was around, the way she made you feel with her inane nicknames; the ache in your heart when she held you close while you studied and she watched tv. You let her talk, you let her yell and cry, let the crying devolve back into yelling before her wind was out again. You apologized. You apologized with the look of a woman more lost then any person should be, you apologized for That Day; for all the days subsequent and you begged her forgiveness. You tentatively took her hand and she grasped it like she was drowning. She managed to murmur “Harrow” before you tiptoed and kissed her. 

So you are 21 and 22. You wait in the hospital surgical area and ignore the way other people glance at the two of you. Your position curled in her lap reading away at Astrophysical Formulae: A Compendium for the Physicist and Astrophysicist is none their business. It’s an original that she bought you for your birthday and you will not let a little thing like bottom surgery keep you from completing it. When your name is called the reluctance to part is only matched by the warmth in your heart when she kisses you. As the nurse leads you away she calls out “Don’t worry sugarlips, I’ll keep the homefires burning.” And the snort you let out is the most affectionate sound she’s ever heard.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just Gideon's side of things based on this nebulous Trans!Harrow au~

You are six and she is five. She asks you to call her Harrow after you mangle her name enough times that her patience is worn as thin as she is. You tag along with her at recess everyday and you think she dislikes you for it but you don’t care. She’s your friend now, your first one and no bully is gonna come near her while you’re around.

You are 11 and she is 10. It’s nice to have her in almost every class with you now. She was teased and bullied when you two were still in separate classes, with different teachers but she jumped ahead into your year and hasn’t looked back since. She lets you sit next to her and only yells at you under her breath when you aren’t paying attention in history, but you don’t care. There’s no real bite when she’s like that, she just wants you to do well. At least you think she does. It's hard to tell some days, when she’s quieter and her face more drawn you toe the line as best you can. You try not to resent the way she only ever begrudgingly comes over to your house and never invites you to hers. She has reason.

You are 14 and she is 13. You don’t understand the uptick in rumors about her. You don’t understand why boys stare at her and her scraggly hair nor why girls laugh and mock her oversized hoodies even in may. You get detention more than once for someone stepping past what you deem acceptable and you earn a few bruises cause of the fights they bring on themselves. But she waits for you, waits for you to be released from school jail, a tired “Seriously Griddle must you always pick fights with multiple people at once?” escaping her lips before she hands you her books. You always accept taking them just like you always accept following her back to the library to watch her do more extra credit work. You accept her and you know that's enough for her.

You are 16 and she is 15. You bite off a curse as you power your scooter down the sidewalk faster than is safe without a helmet. She didn’t exactly give you the time to grab one, you’d only found out because Palamedes had pointed out her missing chess practice and pieced it together. The extra furtiveness to her steps, the way her glower deepened when she caught you looking at Coronabeth; the way she’d added even more layers to herself as time passed. You managed to arrive in time and you just looked at her back for a moment seized by something inexplicable. You realized she was scared. Harrow, Harrowhark Nonagesimus; your best friend was absolutely pants-shittingly terrified. Her shoulders were near up to her ears, her body was visibly trembling and she paced slightly back and forth in front of the doctor’s office door. So you sighed to yourself, letting the pants she’d bought you for christmas last jangle enough to get her attention and only hesitated slightly before clapping her on the shoulder and cracking your joke. You ignored the desperate urge you felt to take her hand and comfort her. That wasn’t what you were for.

You are 18 and she is 17. She hates you rattles around your skull in much the same way a bullet would. You can’t escape from those words anymore then light can escape a black hole. She was- you drown the thought with more pain. Better to feel the pain of separation, of denial then that. She hates you, you think again and let yourself cry tears long enough to sleep. The thought and absence is still there when you wake.

You are 19 and she is 18. You have your first game on her birthday. You spend the morning weeping into your pillow before screaming hard enough that when you cough after, thin drops of blood spot your hand. Fate hates you as much as she does you reason, half mad before showering. How you manage to perform well enough to stay on the team you’ll never know. How you manage to ignore her birthday as your team claps you on the back for the game winning home run you’ll never forgive yourself.

You are 20 and Dulcinea is thrust upon you like a viper. It's good, your manager explains, for the team's star player to be seen out and about with the owner's daughter. He doesn't understand that Dulcinea is- she isn’t Harrow. You hate yourself for letting her twist in your soul more, to keep you sucked down in the mire but you can’t. She’s Harrow and you are Gideon and that is all. But you play along. You let photographers capture the two of you going to dinner, you let them see you walking her gently around local parks but you never give them more. You never give her more though you think there’s an unspoken understanding between you. Bringing her into your cursed orbit has thrown her into Palamedes and you remember enough astronomy to know they’ll collide eventually. You just hope it's soon.

You are 21 and she is 20. You still miss her, in truth you still wake up some days halfway through sending her a good morning text before your brain catches up with your thumbs. Those days are harder. Those days finding you running yourself ragged at the batting cages, eking out one more double, one more home run; making your arms ache enough that you can barely lift them the next day. It's a purgation for you, a cleanse by punishment you still think you deserve. Until your phone rings just as you get dressed for your trip to 3 states over and your heart stops. Your lungs stop, the world tilts and you feel a younger version of you answer the phone. You’re racing to her the moment you hear the sobs.

It's not hard to get to her. It's no trouble at all, you ignore the way your legs burn from the full tilt sprint, the way your lungs heave as you race eight full miles. Her name is the only thing that you are even aware of, a mantra, a pray, curse; a salvation. You know where her school is because of Cam, you know where she is because she texts you where to find her and you don’t know what to say when you. You find her and she looks- you can’t. You can’t do that to yourself again. You throw up the first wall and you yell. You yell loud enough to shake birds out of their trees, to make college students lean out their dorm windows and stare. You don’t notice. The second wall crashes down. You hear yourself choke back sobs as you ask why now. Why again, why torture you; use you up and throw you way. The third wall. You’re yelling again, no longer aware of the words just the feeling. She stands there for all of it, some look on her face that you can’t place. And she finally talks. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry Gideon.” And that in your heart is enough.

You are 22 and she is 21. You are vaguely worried about what she’s about to go through. You know she is used to pain, used to bundling it closer and closer to herself then any reasonable well adjusted person could withstand and dealing with it. But you still worry. It’ll be weeks of gradually diminishing helplessness, weeks of adjusting to the change she’s about to make. She’s so calm in your lap that it should frighten you instead it just makes you love her even more. You’ve stopped thinking that was impossible years ago. When they come to take her, she affects a struggle as you smother her with kisses, murmuring an “I love you” into the shell of her ear. You enjoy the way her cheeks pink over slightly at that, for Harrow it's a full blooded rush to the head. Letting her go this time is easy because now? Now you both get to go home.


End file.
